happy ever after
by edeabeth
Summary: 6 alternate story lines. (cora found a happy-ever-after in the end)


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1.

_(cora found a happy-ever-after in the end)_

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The gardener came back as a gardener. He has mud on his boots and he smells the way lavender in the rain does. He smiles at her with wariness, nothing but fear in his eyes.

She doesn't understand, but she also does understand.

They stand there for hours, pretending that it isn't raining and that they aren't terrified.

Eventually she shrugs, "Suppose I'd never be good as a princess, anyways." She takes his hand in hers, feeling the roughness of his hand.

His face breaks into a real smile, and she remembers rings of hay and an endless night that tasted like stardust and felt like heaven.

"I don't think I'd do anyone any good as a prince, either." He tells her quietly as the rain falls all around them. His smile fades, and he looks grey and worn. "You aren't running away. I lied to you."

"I know." She sighs. "But it doesn't matter anymore. What does matter is that we are going to catch our deaths out in the cold."

He smiles at her and she kisses him.

Somewhere down the line, they do get married properly. She wears her mother's old dress and weaves flowers into her hair. It's neither silk nor gold, but it's beautiful in the way happy-ever-afters should be. She hums as she dabs vanilla in her hair, and suddenly Jonathon is in her tiny little room looking at her as if she's the crown and everything right in the world.

"You're not supposed to see the dress before the ceremony, you know." She tries to smother her smile as she smooth's her hands over the dress.

"We've always done things backwards, you know."

She doesn't remember ever being _not_ happy.

The straw ring is turned into a simply copper ring, but it doesn't matter. He makes her a crown out of straw and roses, and she laughs again and again.

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They live in a tiny cabin. Jonathon plants gardens all around their home, and she becomes a seamstress. Two small little girls grow up happy with a happy mother and father.

_("I love you, Zelda."_

"_You will always be enough, Gina.")_

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2.

_(regina never cast the curse)_

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Regina is smart.

She knows how to hurt Snow, and she does hurt Snow.

She storms the castle at dawn, the shrill cries of a child howling through the empty halls. Everywhere is death, and she is the cause of it.

It sickens her.

That's why she rips the innocent child from Snow White's arms, pulling her tight against her cold chests and feels something wonderful. She doesn't understand it, but this tiny child so vulnerable in her grip is changing something. She can feel it.

She leaves Snow screaming, a wardrobe burning and Charming pleading. They're broken beneath the weight of broken happy-ever-afters.

Victory tastes like stardust and heaven, and this child cries for Regina now.

"Oh, Emily." She sighs, and slowly she rewrites her destiny into innocence.

Emily has long blonde hair that every morning Regina braids. She wears dresses of every colour, and her smiles are like sunshine. She even returns the heart to the huntsman, exiling him from her world. Her world is Emily's world.

Snow and Charming search. Regina can taste their anguish, and it is all that she has ever wanted.

_(Snow can never have another child, and Charming simply wants Emma.)_

_(Emma isn't Emma any longer because Regina is transforming their story completely.)_

Emily calls Regina one morning mother, and since then Regina never stops smiling. "I love you, mother." Emily informs her solemnly before biting into a deep red apple.

Regina doesn't need a curse, not anymore. What she does need in her daughter to love her back.

And she does.

Regina lived happily-ever-after.

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3.

_(rumple and belle remain belle and rumple)_

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He gave her the real dagger.

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4.

_(daniel never died, snow was never a complication)_

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Daniel proposed and she accepted. They rode away into the woods, and she feels exhilaration pounding in her chest as she waits for someone (_her mother_) to stop her. They run opposite to the screaming girl upon the horse, and Regina never looks back.

(_Snow White dies, thrown against the rocks.)_

Daniel loves her, every inch of her. Regina feels complete and happy and warm, and Daniel kisses her tightly two kingdoms from home.

He kisses her, and his kisses tastes like freedom.

They make a home in a cabin surrounded by gardens that Regina tends to herself. Daniel raises horses and she has a child. They name her Emma, and her laugh is as beautiful as heaven and stardust.

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5.

_(comas and memory loss)_

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She's unsettled. She's sarcastic and smart; she carries around three books on her person always. She tells him that she loves him, and her touch feels like pale gold.

He doesn't remember a lot, other than toll bridges and strange fairy tales. But that's alright. Because she does remember, but she's fine with painting over the past and restarting in the present to begin the future.

Her kisses are slow, and her touch is fleeting. He can read between the lines that she's terrified of pushing him to go to fast.

He loves her for that.

He gets a job at the animal shelter and every morning they go running together. He avoids the school all together, terrified of the woman with short black hair who's so desperately looking for a happy ending.

He loves Katherine, because she simply feels like heaven against his body and every word she speaks and doesn't speak is like stardust.

_("I'm always going to love you," she informs him one evening at dinner._

"_I should hope so, as you're stuck with me forever.")_

He never does regain his memories, but that's alright. He has plenty of new ones.

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6.

_(emma was wanted)_

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She get adopted as a child.

She is never sent away, not even when Paul and Victoria do have another child. They name the little girl Elsa because Elsa and Emma just sound _perfect_.

Victoria braids Emma's hair up every morning and Elsa has perfect little smiles. By fourth grade Emma is Elsa's savior, and no one dares to look at her little sister wrong.

Step by step things go on, and Emma graduates high school tearfully. She's not ready to be an adult, and Paul and Victoria aren't ready to let her grow up. Growing up sounds wrong, and being a child tastes like stardust.

Emma goes to university to study history before taking a course in fairy tales. She remembers as a child pretending the her parents were Snow White and Prince Charming and they had to send her away for her own good. Emma discovers, however, as she sits in the lecture hall taking notes on the Black Forest that she doesn't regret a thing at all.

She goes home every weekend in the bright yellow convertible her parents bought for her and every weekend she finds her home is always within her shadow.

(she turns 28 surrounded by all her family.)

(neal never was a complication)

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End file.
